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Alex Hillegass
English 1102H
4/28/2017

Research Dossier

Technology becomes more advanced and is able to do new things every year. From TVs

to cell phones; technology is always around us. With the use of computers we have become more

productive than ever but soon computers may replace human jobs completely. The goal of my

research is to provide background information on how companies are currently automating work,

what work can be done by robots and computers, and then analyze how this may affect the labor

market. My research will give the reader background information about how computers are

currently replacing humans in the workforce and then share a plan for helping the people who

lose their jobs to technology.

The four examples of technology that I will focus on are: car production, transportation,

music, and the financial sector. Each of these four areas have already been deeply affected by

computers. Manufacturing processes for vehicles have drastically cut the number of workers

needed to produce one car. Since the Model T, Ford has been a leader in researching new ways

to increase production efficiency from their breakthrough in assembly line technology to the use

of robotics to weld. Self driving cars have been on the brink of disrupting the entire

transportation industry for the past few years while we have been unable to create any

regulations. Artificial intelligence is now able to create music; Emily Howell is a classical

composing computer who can produce original music 24 hours a day. Trading algorithms have

controlled a majority of the financial transactions happening in the past 10 years. Each area

covers a different type of activity for computers and robots to master, manufacturing takes labor

skills, self driving cars need to work in fast paced dynamic situations, creative AI requires a deep

understanding of how brains function, and financial algorithms need exceptional analysis skills.

These machines may not be perfected for now, but eventually their skill will surpass that of
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humans. After exploring jobs that can be easily taken by robots I will discuss whether this is a

real problem and what we can do to solve any issues that may arise.

Sources like the Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy from the Obama

administration, claim that the economic impacts can easily be handled with a few policies. While

the UN report titled Robots and Industrialization in Developing Countries claims that more

broad global policies must be placed to ensure all countries keep pace, both of these are well

researched reports that include evidence and sources with charts, graphs, and statistics. They also

analyze how these statistics affect their audience. The in depth analysis of how economies may

be affected is a key part of my research. Recently, a number of well known CEOs have caused a

stir by making claims about the possibility of job loss. Mark Cuban has made claims about the

coming job loss and people like Elon Musk claim to have found solutions ranging from taxing

robots to a universal basic income. My research takes a look at a few different plans before

explaining how a universal basic income is the best plan we currently have.

Research Proposal:

Documentation Style: MLA because this will also be addressed to both the general public and
engineering community.

Purpose: As a computer science major, any future job I have will be about creating products to
solve problems that people are inefficient at solving themselves. Researching about automation
could help me explore the areas of research that are currently open and take a small look at how
automation is done today. Then I will look at how automation is going to affect the job market
for the average person.

Intended audience: My audience is the class and the general public, who I plan to educate on
the topic of automation.
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Research Map:

Research Question:
How is technology being used today to automate processes? How could this affect
peoples jobs and what can we do to ensure that unemployed people have enough to
survive on?

Keywords: automation, industrial automation, algorithm, unemployment, artificial intelligence

Kinds of Research: I will mostly be using internet sources because much of what companies do
can not be found in scholarly articles. I may try to interview my brother for a field report to
learn about how current methods are being researched to increase efficiency in industrial
manufacturing. I will try to include any scholarly articles that I can find related to my research.

Time Table
March

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

1 2 3 OOP Test 4
Bio Test

5 6 7 8 9 10 Math 11 Spring
Test Break
Final draft Starts
research
dossier

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Spring
Break Ends

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31

April

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

2 3 Rough 4 5 Rough 6 7 OOP Test 8

draft 1 draft 2 of Bio Test
research research Math Test
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paper paper

9 10 11 12 Rough 13 14 15
draft 3 of
research
paper

16 17 18 19 Rough 20 21 22
draft Self- Research
Assessment Paper Final
Draft

23 24 Bio Test 25 26 Math 27 28 TED 29

Final talk and e-
portfolio

30
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Annotated Bibliography

Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy. Washington, D.C. : Executive Office of

the President, 2016., 2016. EBSCOhost,

Responding to the economic effects of AI-driven automation will be a significant policy

challenge for the next Administration and its successors. AI has already begun to transform the
American workplace, changing the types of jobs available and the skills that workers need to
thrive. All Americans should have the opportunity to participate in addressing these challenges,
whether as students, workers, managers, or technical leaders, or simply as citizens with a voice
in the policy debate. AI raises many new policy questions, which should be continued topics for
discussion and consideration by future Administrations, Congress, the private sector, and the
public. Continued engagement among government, industry, technical and policy experts, and
the public should play an important role in moving the Nation toward policies that create broadly
shared prosperity, unlock the creative potential of American companies and workers, and ensure
the Nations continued leadership in the creation and use of AI. [BY AUTHORS]
This sources comes directly from the government itself. The writers being a mixture of
directors from different offices and councils. It heavily relies on statistics to make the point that
changes are going to happen. The report does have a strong liberal bias though, as the policy
recommendations are about increasing the social safety net.
This report has a wide array of data that can be used to show what groups could be most
affected by automation. It also gives examples of possible ways the government could respond to
counteract any negative consequences.

Cope, David Emily Howell Centaur Records, FEb. 2009,

artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/cope/Emily-howell.htm. Accessed 10 Mar. 2017.

This is the computer generated orchestral music. It can produce 100% original works all
day and even has a few albums out. This music is indistinguishable from music produced by
humans.
Created by David Cope a professor of music at UC Santa Cruz.
This is my example of how computers are now able to do creative work. Something
which has only been done by humans before.

Cosmin-Alexandru, tefan, et al. "The Potential Impact of Technological Development

on Future Jobs." Annals of 'Constantin Brancusi' University of Targu-Jiu. Economy

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Series, 2015 Special, pp. 484-487. EBSCOhost,

Technological developments in the last decades have reached unbelievable levels, what
was once the domain of science fiction movies is now a reality, and this developments have left
few areas of human life unchanged. In this paper we aim to explore the changes that technology
brought to the way people work and, especially to the way people will work. While we
acknowledge that any prediction about the future is almost always proved wrong from the get go,
we think that the importance of the subject warrants the risk. The paper draws its routes from
some of the most influential theories about how technology will impact the way people work and
is main objective is to spark a conversation about the merits of lack thereof that they contain. It is
by no means an extensive work, but rather the beginning of a research focus that will, hopefully
bring new insights in the above mentioned field. For the sake of convenience we have grouped
the predictions in three categories: "Business as usual", "Lateral developments" and "All bets are
off" based on how profound the change would be. Each of this levels offers different benefits, as
well as different challenges, our hope is that throw a process of thorough consideration solutions
can be generated to maximize the former while minimizing the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM
AUTHOR]
Stefan Cosmin-Alexandru is a business professor at the University of Bucharest.
This research paper tries to take and unbiased look at the potential economic impacts of
technology. It follows the Rogerian mode and tries its best to support each viewpoint as much as
possible. This is a great place to find support for the viewpoints analyzed in my research.

Hagerty, James R. Meet the New Generation of Robots for Manufacturing. The Wall Street

Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 2 June 2015,

www.wsj.com/articles/meet-the-new-generation-of-robots-for-manufacturing-143330088

4. Accessed 22 Feb. 2017.

This article covers a new development in the robots used to manufacture goods. It also
has good statistics on what manufacturing robots are being used for currently.
James Hagerty is a reporter and former chief of the The Wall Street Journal in London.
The article is going to be very helpful when I take a look at robots in manufacturing. It
may not have actual statistics on how many jobs could be lost because of this but it shows the
range of tasks a robot can do.

Halal, William, et al. "Forecasts of AI and Future Jobs in 2030: Muddling through Likely, with

Two Alternative Scenarios." Journal of Futures Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, Dec. 2016, pp.
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83-95. EBSCOhost, doi:10.6531/JFS.2016.21(2).R83.

The article focuses on the issue of unemployment by forecasting the distribution of jobs
related to artificial intelligence (AI). Topics discussed include elimination of jobs in 2025 by
(AI); development of advanced AI systems; IBM's partnership with Cleveland Clinic to develop
a medical diagnosis system; a forecast by TechCast Global on distribution of jobs; and the
impact of Advanced AI and robotics on the jobs that involve manual and service
tasks.[ABSTRACT BY AUTHOR]
William Halal is a researcher at George Washington University.
This research paper is almost a miniature version of what I aim to do. It includes
examples of how robots are doing complex jobs and also includes some of the possible economic
impacts of them.

Henry Ford and the Model T, John Wiley & Sons,

wiley.com/legacy/products/subjects/business/forbes/ford.html. Accessed 10 Mar 2017.

This short page goes through the history of the Ford car company. It talks about how ford
has been on the from line of advancing technology used to increase factory productivity.
While sources are not provided. Wiley has been a prominent education company for a
long time.
This source has great information on Fords improvements to factory productivity. It talks
about how much more productive the Ford factories were when compared to the factories of
other major car companies. It also show how they were able to produce the same number of cars
as the rest of the industry by using a quarter of the workers.

Hughes, James J. "A Strategic Opening for a Basic Income Guarantee in the Global Crisis Being

Created by AI, Robots, Desktop Manufacturing and Biomedicine." Journal of Evolution

& Technology, vol. 24, no. 1, Feb. 2014, pp. 45-61. EBSCOhost,

Robotics and artificial intelligence are beginning to fundamentally change the relative
profitability and productivity of investments in capital versus human labor, creating
technological unemployment at all levels of the workforce, from the North to the developing
world. As robotics and expert systems become cheaper and more capable the percentage of the
population that can find employment will also fall, stressing economies already trying to curtail
"entitlements" and adopt austerity. Two additional technology driven trends will exacerbate the
structural unemployment crisis in the coming decades, desktop manufacturing and anti-aging
medicine. Desktop manufacturing threatens to disintermediate the half of all workers involved in
translating ideas into products in the hands of consumers, while anti-aging therapies will increase
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the old age dependency ratio of retirees to tax-paying workers. Policies that are being proposed
to protect or create employment will have only a temporary moderating effect on job loss. Over
time these policies, which will impose raise costs, lower the quality of goods and services, and
lower competitiveness, will become fiscally impossible and lose political support. In order to
enjoy the benefits of technological innovation and longer, healthier lives we will need to
combine policies that control the pace of replacing paid human labor with a universal basic
income guarantee (BIG) provided through taxation and the public ownership of wealth. The
intensifying debate over the reform of "entitlements" will be the strategic opening for a campaign
for BIG to replace disability and unemployment insurance, Social Security, and other elements
of the welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
James Hughes is the Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging
Technologies. He has a PhD in sociology from University of Chicago and has done lots of work
studying human-robot interactions.
Much like Elon Musks proposed universal basic income plan, this paper offers support
for paying people just for being a citizen. It takes the view that technology will cause huge
changes to our system of living and we need to completely change the support systems in place
for helping unemployed people.

Kozul-Wright, Richard. Robots and Industrialization in Developing Counries. United Nations

Conference on Trade and Development, Oct. 2016,

unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/presspb2016d6_en.pdf. Accessed 8 Mar. 2017.

Industrialization has historically been synonymous with development, while

deindustrialization is a well-established trend in mature developed economies as they move
towards services-based economies. Yet recent trends show that many developing countries
especially in Africa and Latin America have witnessed their shares of manufacturing
employment and output shrinking long before they have attained income levels comparable to
those in the developed world. Such premature deindustrialization began during the adjustment
programmes in the 1980s and 1990s, yet has continued, as commodity booms and speculative
financial inflows have led to currency appreciation and a loss of manufacturing competitiveness,
compounded by the rise of Chinas manufacturing exports. The current question is therefore:
now that the commodity bonanza is over, capital flows are reversing and China is turning
towards a more balanced growth path driven more by domestic demand than exports, how can
Africa and Latin America reignite industrialization? Whatever the chosen strategy, it will have to
account for the rapidly increasing spread of new automation technologies and artificial
intelligence in the form of robots[ABSTRACT BY AUTHOR]
This report was published in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
It uses credible sources and takes a look at the effects on a more global level.
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This well researched paper from the UN outlines changes that could happen to workers
globally as robotics replaces jobs. It will be very useful for comparing and contrasting with the
report from the Obama administration.

Langlois, Shawn. Hello, Self-Driving Cars, and Goodbye to 4.1 Million Jobs? Market Watch.

MarketWatch, 17 Sept. 2016. Web. 22 Feb. 2017.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hello-self-driving-cars-goodbye-41-million-jobs-206-

09-15

This article is a very opinionated piece about how self driving cars are unavoidable. It
does however have good information on the number of jobs that may be lost to self driving cars.

Shawn Langlois is simply and editor and writer for Market Watch. The majority of his
work is about politics and is mostly useless but he does have good statistics on how many jobs
may be lost.

This article provides good statistics for how many jobs may be lost in the United States
because of autonomous vehicles. It will help to show how important it is to talk about
technology. It encourages us to work to find a solution.

Seth, Shobhit. The World of High Frequency Algorithmic Trading. N.p.: Investopedia, 16

Sept. 2015. Web. 22 Feb. 2017.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/091615/world-high-frequency-algorithmc

-Trading.asp

Gives an overview of how high frequency trading works, its profit potential, the
evolution of it, benefits, and the drawbacks of using high frequency trading.

Investopedia is a trusted source for information relating to finance. Shobhit Seth has a
Masters degree in Financial Management and has spent the last 14 years working on quantitative
research.
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This covers my research into algorithms that now run the stock market. Using this source
I will be able to show how robots are better than humans at mass analysis.

United Kingdom : 85% of Employers Believe Workplace Automation Will Create More Jobs

Than It Will Replace." Mena Report, 2016. EBSCOhost,

A major new report by Capita Resourcing, reveals that 85% of employers believe
workplace automation will create more jobs than it will replace in their organisation in 10 years
time. [...][BY AUTHOR]

Mena Report is a prominent business news source in the Middle East and North African
areas.

This can be used to support the side that believes technology will create more jobs than it
will take away. It also has the added benefit of coming from employers.

Vardi, Moshe Y. "The Moral Imperative of Artificial Intelligence." Communications of the ACM,

vol. 59, no. 5, May 2016, p. 5. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1145/2903530.

This research article starts by explaining how important it was for AlphaGo to finally
beat the current world champion of Go then it moves to how self driving cars will benefit the
world. It also talks about job loss in the manufacturing sector.
The recipient of 3 IBM Outstanding Innovation Awards and a Godel Prize, Moshe Vardi
is a computer science professor at Rice University who has authored over 400 technical papers.
This piece covers many areas but the main theme is that these advances in technology are
good for us. They should not be fought but embraced and welcomed even if they cause some
economic problems initially.